VLOG: White Elephant Parties and Schedules

I hope you had an excellent Project for Awesome 2014 over the weekend, I watched as much of the livestream as I possibly could, until my wife told me to put the phone down or she’d throw me out a window.

She was joking. Probably.

Thank you guys for checking out my video highlighting Empower Tanzania on Friday, it felt really good to do something important on the channel rather than just only talk about the Hobbit and Harry Potter for a change.

BUT SPEAKING OF WHICH, CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME HARRY POTTER SHIRT SHIRT AND BILBO BAGGINS BOBBLE-HEAD

I got these at a White Elephant party this Saturday and I am so so happy with them. Look at them.

I had to steal these gifts from someone and I think that just makes me enjoy them even more.

They also came in this sweet-ass case with the Warner Brothers logo on it. All in all, best White Elephant party in a while.

If you’ve never done a White Elephant party, basically everyone comes with an item from around their home, wrapped up like a new present, and all the presents go under the tree.

You all draw numbers, and then the first person picks a present and unwraps it.

The second person can choose to open another present or steal the first person’s present, and then the third person can open a new one or steal either of the first two presents, and so on until the end of the game, where the first person can now choose to steal any of the other presents.

There’s one catch, though, which is that a gift can only be stolen twice. After the second time, it’s locked and can’t be stolen again.

And I got the case and the stuff on a second steal, so it was locked. I was…way too happy with myself.

White Elephant parties—fun, but very cutthroat. Very easy to ruin a friendship playing that game.

If you’ve never done a White Elephant party, try it out this year, you’ll have a lot of fun. I promise you. If you HAVE done them before, tell me your favorite thing you’ve ever pulled from a party. I’d love to hear your stories.

So in addition to getting closer to Christmas time, it’s also that time of the year when I try to get back on some sort of a regular schedule.

I try this fairly often, and it never seems to stick, but it’s REALLY GOOD for the first few days.

Who knows, maybe this time it’ll work.

So first of all I’m back on a day schedule. I’ve been staying up nights for a couple of weeks now, but I’m back in the land of the living.

Now I’m going to start vlogging first thing in the morning—hence, what you’re watching right now—and trying to get my video done before noon.

Then after lunch, at 1:00pm, I’ll do an hour and a half broadcast of VlogaNovel over on my Vloganovel channel.

I’ll broadcast again at 4:00pm, but that’ll be on my Twitch channel with whatever game I happen to be playing—right now it’s Hearthstone. That game…boy, that’s a life-ruiner.

Then I’ll broadcast another hour and a half of VlogaNovel at 9:00pm, right before I go to bed.

And all the other hours in the day will be doing whatever else it is I happen to be doing—formatting books for Sterling & Stone or working on my marketing or book editing, or whatever.

But basically I want to start doing a daily schedule that’s predictable, so that if people are looking to watch stuff, they’ll know when to tune in every day to watch it.

Like I said! Never lasts very long! But we’ll try it and we’ll see how it goes.

I hope you’re having a great holiday season so far, Rebels. Wish me luck on my new schedule, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe. Byyye.

Over 100,000 readers have read and loved Garrett's books, like the fantasy hits Nightblade and Midrealm. He's also a film festival favorite with movies like Unsaid, and a tech guru who posts lots of helpful how-tos for writers and filmmakers over at garrettbrobinson.com.